In the Agamemnon, Clytaemnestra behaves more like a man than a woman’. How far do you agree with this statement? (June 2005)

The Agamemnon is the first play of the trilogy of The Oresteia by Aeschylus, and was first performed around 458BC. The Agamemnon tells the story of Agamemnon’s’ nostos after the fall of Troy, and the trails that fall on the House of Atreus due to the actions of the members of that house, primarily Agamemnon himself, and his wife Clytaemnestra. Throughout the play, we see her primarily as the unfaithful wife of Agamemnon, but Clytaemnestra was the daughter of Leda and Tyndareus, King of Sparta and sister of Helen, the woman on whose head the Trojan war is said to have rested. In this essay I will explore how Clytaemnestra behaves more like a man than a woman, by discussing her intelligence, her aggression, her dominant personality, her presence in politics, and her own opinion of women. I will also look at her more traditionally feminine, traits including her maternal feelings towards Iphigenia. Clytaemnestra is incredibly intelligent and cunning, two supposedly masculine traits, and uses this throughout the play. A key example of this is the series of torches plan – a series of torches leading from Troy to Argos to inform Clytaemnestra of victory – and her husband’s impending arrival. The Watchman himself states of her ‘she manoeuvres like a man’. Even the leader of the chorus, who is slow to give any credit to Clytaemnestra herself for the plan, rather giving it to the gods, is amazed by ‘the wonder of it all’ – the vastness of her plan. In her beacon speech Clytaemnestra also lists the areas her torches go through, showing a shocking amount of geographical knowledge for a woman, whose primary concern was supposed to be with the home, not the wider world. A second example of her intelligence is when she goads Agamemnon to walk across the crimson tapestries at his arrival to his palace – she ensures that the wrath of the gods will fall upon him for his act of hubris. By comparing his actions to that of what Priam would do, she ensures he seals his fate. This level of manipulation, completely bending another person’s will without them fully realising it is something more traditional of heroes such as Odysseus, not the women-folk in their stories. As a character, she is also very aggressive, taking the lead role in her revenge for the murder of Iphigeneia. She both orchestrates and carries out the murder of both her husband and Cassandra, and does not try to hide the fact she stabbed her husband to death, ‘I did it all. I don’t deny it, no.’, rather she seems proud of it – she gained revenge for an injustice that fell upon her house, and much like male heroes, she wants the kleos that is associated with accomplishing such a feat. In her relationships with male characters in the play, excluding to an extent Agamemnon, she is extremely dominant. This role-reversal is most clearly seen in her relationship with Aegisthus, the cousin of Agamemnon, and the man who she has an affair with while her husband is at Troy. In both the planning and execution of the murders Clytaemnestra is leading, something the chorus mocks Aegisthus for in the Parados, saying he ‘schemed his death, but failed to cut him down with his own hand?’. They question his ability to lead a country as he unable to act like a man and is so quick to rise to the goading of the chorus – instead it is Clytaemnestra who intervenes, calming both sides and preventing a fight. She behaves like a king would. Secondly, at the end of the play in the closing line, Clytaemnestra tell Aegisthus ‘You and I have power now. We will set the house in order’. The use of ‘you and I’ as well as ‘we’ imply that she feels that they are at least equals, however the idea that a couple could be equals was not something the Greeks believed – rather they felt women were inferior in every way, clear in how the Chorus constantly seek to undermine and belittle her, such as when they question the validity of her knowledge that Troy has fallen. And thirdly, the fact she is having an extra marital affair is something which is extremely common for Greek men to do, for example Agamemnon and Cassandra, but it is not something a Greek woman would be expected to do, as it completely goes against the belief that they are the property of their kyrios. Clytaemnestra also regularly speaks in public settings, on matters which fall outside her expected sphere of the home and religious matters, something completely scandalous for a well-bred Greek woman to do. Her beacon speech in the first episode is an example of her confidence speaking in public and her vast knowledge of the world around her, this as mentioned previously was not expected of women in Ancient Greece. In the third episode, she speaks to Agamemnon and the Chorus of how she has missed Agamemnon and how she ‘wavered between the living and the dead’, something which we as the audience know is not true, yet she convinces Agamemnon that she is. However, I feel her most compelling speech occurs in the fifth episode where she informs the chorus of how she planned the death of her husband ‘year by year’, and uses net imagery – ‘I coil him round and round in the wealth, the robes of doom’ – and vivid descriptions – ‘great spays of bool, and the murderous shower wounds me’ – to piece together an incredibly moving speech. This speech is made all the more poignant that a death scene is usually told by a messenger, however in this case we have the murderess herself telling the tale. Another important point is that Clytaemnestra herself also seems to view women as inferior to men. She does not seem to be fighting to change the sexist society she lives in, rather she is allowing herself to rise above it, complaining when the Chorus ‘try me like some desperate woman’. The idea of her wanted to be treated equally and judged fairly is reminiscent of Athenian democracy where all men are considered equal. However, it can be argued that Clytaemnestra’s intense and violent reaction to Iphigeneia’s death is due to her maternal side. In her explanation for murdering her husband, she argues ‘he sacrificed his own child, our daughter, the agony I laboured into love’. She is incredibly upset that he would value the life of his daughter less than another woman’s war. Her inability to understand he was bound by oath and that if he broke his oath the gods would show him no mercy, was called as a more feminine trait – the inability to see the big picture. Another counter-argument would be that Clytaemnestra is very religious – at the start of the play we see her lighting alters to perform sacrifices to the gods to thank them for the fall of try, and throughout the play she feels as if she is acting on behalf of Fate and Justice – ‘my husband made a corpse by this right hand – a masterpiece of Justice’.To conclude, I believe in the Agamemnon Clytaemnestra does behave more like a man than a woman, in an ancient Greek context, primarily because she makes the offensive move to take revenge on someone who has wronged her, and is able to do so without facing any immediate consequences. She also has worldly knowledge, is dominant in her relationships, and can speak well enough to convince an, at least modern, audience that she is doing the right thing.